*I’m not into fanfiction this deeply, so I’m going to file this under shit I suspected but wasn’t actually sure about. I know there is a lot of racism in fandom, and there are some who are specifically invested in it, but there are also some who practice its effects because they’re not looking closely at what their doing. This is why diligence against racism is important.

You can’t just tell yourself how progressive you are and then rest on your laurels after that. Being anti-racist requires constant scrutiny and questioning, and when you get called out on it, the proper reaction isn’t to double down on your ignorance, but acknowledge what you did wrong, stop doing it, and guard against doing it in the future.

Criticizing slash shipping culture for the rampant and pervasive racism and misogyny present in many related fandom spaces isn’t homophobic.

Your desire to see two white guys get busy doesn’t render you or your fellow shippers immune from criticism.

Your (valid) need for queer representation as a fan doesn’t mean that no one can point out that fandom only seems to think white guys can be queer or that there’s nothing racist or misogynistic about how fandom as an institution tends to privilege the white guys.

There are always preemptive posts like this aimed at het shippers in fan spaces with prominent black characters. I can think of several fandoms off the top of my head, Preacher, Sleepy Hollow, The Flash (btw Barry’s biggest slash ship isn’t between him and Carlos, but between him and another white guy), The Walking Dead.

The people who ship het white couples are often the same people who ship white male slash, especially when a black person gets anywhere near their white fav. They are the same people who will abandon slash and support het whiteness, if the only choice they have is between a black male character and a white male character.

The Pacific Rim fandom literally worked overtime to not ship any people of colour. The biggest slash ships aren’t between Stacker Pentecost and Raleigh Beckett, or Stacker and Herc; one is an incest ship between Herc and his son, and the other is between two white male scientists (one who is married to a black woman that the fandom hates). None of the popular ships, het or slash, include people of colour despite the fact that the film starred a Black man and Asian woman.

Finn/Poe was the most popular slash ship in Star Wars, until people elevated the two white guys over them, one of who had approximately 5 minutes of screen time.

Maybe you live in an alternate universe where black fans aren’t forced to be on the defensive every single time a black actor is cast in something, or maybe you’re not following any black people (of any gender or sexuality).

Addendum: while the most popular Flash ship is indeed Barry/Leonard as@allerasphinx says, Wenworth Miller is actually biracial (but his character is never acknowledged as such, and fandom treats him pretty much like they would a white character). @dragonmuse made a great post about it here.

And while the most popular m/m ship is indeed Barry/Leonard and they have the most fanworks, Barry/Caitlin have the biggest and loudest fanbase instead of Barry/Iris, his canon black love interest. So, yeah, it’s still about racism.

You have no right to talk over (and lbr here, talk down to) black women about the racism they see and experience in fandom. That is what you’re doing here so please:

Shut the fuck up!

People on social media call Iris and her actress Candice Patton racial slurs in her mentions when Candice tweets about the show.

This is constant.

This happened before we even knew that Joe took care of Barry as a child.

The fact that right now I could find some die hard comic fans calling Candice/Iris slurs AND TAGGING HER IN THE POSTS proves that it’s got everything to do with skin color. It has every thing to do with race and racism.

And again, because you seem so have no ability to understand the relationship in the show OR basic reading comprehension (I get that you’re French, but really now?): Joe is Barry’s father figure, true. But Iris has never ever looked at him as a brother figure. He’s her best friend and the man she knows she’s going to be with, but he’s not her fucking brother.

(Like you fuckers out here screaming some made up crap about how Iris and Barry are siblings don’t seem to understand that a) this is the CW, not HBO. There will be no invest ships being canon or b) that Barry/Iris as a ship are responsible for almost all of the speedsters in the DC universe like they literally have to get together for certain characters to exist.)

If you’re going to comment on my posts with some ignorant bullshit, at least make sure you’re not regurgitating the same comments every single loser in fandom tries to bring to the table.

*Stitch’s Media Mix calls it where she sees it, and pulls no punches. I’m not as deep into the fandom as she is so I depend on her to let me know the latest wtfery fandom has been getting up to lately.

The only feminism visible in the MCU is white feminism and I’m tired of Jessica Jones and Agent Carter being held up as ~the standard~ for feminist superhero shows when neither show has women of color in any significant capacity, both shows are set in places where lots of POC lived and erased them outside of painfully problematic plot points, and really focused on the white woman’s burden above everything.

And okay, let’s not forget that Jessica Jones had specific issues where a Black woman’s death was repeatedly shown and used as a way to make viewers empathize with JESSICA’S pain and where all of the lesbians shown were in a love triangle that ended in a horrible death for one of the women – the wife of one of the actual worst lesbians on film.

Note also that every openly queer woman in the show who has a recurring and relatively significant role is white.

Jessica Jones as a show also had fat shaming out of the blue and a shit ton of ableism besides..

But yeah, tell me all about how feminist these shows are and how empowering they are to someone who basically would only exist onscreen in those shows if they were getting killed or portrayed via racist stereotypes.

*And we had to discuss the contraversy surrounding Riri. Representation isn’t doing anyone any good when the only people allowed to write the stories of marginalized groups of people are a handful of white guys:

Marvel writer Brian Michael Bendis talks the creation of Riri Williams, who will take over for Tony Stark

There’s a new Iron Man. Well, Iron Man for now. She’s still working on the name. The events at the end of the comic book event series Civil War II will result in Tony Stark stepping out of the Iron Man suit and a new character, Riri Williams, taking over, Marvel tells TIME. (Note: Tony’s departure doesn’t mean you know the end to Civil War II yet.)Riri is a science genius who enrolls in MIT at the age of 15. She comes to the attention of Tony when she builds her own Iron Man suit in her dorm. Creator and Iron Man writer Brian Michael Bendis spoke exclusively to TIME about the creation of Riri Williams with book artist Stefano Caselli and Marvel’s increasingly diverse cast of characters.

TIME: How did you come up with the character of Riri Williams?

Bendis: One of the things that stuck with me when I was working in Chicago a couple of years ago on a TV show that didn’t end up airing was the amount of chaos and violence. And this story of this brilliant, young woman whose life was marred by tragedy that could have easily ended her life—just random street violence—and went off to college was very inspiring to me. I thought that was the most modern version of a superhero or superheroine story I had ever heard. And I sat with it for awhile until I had the right character and the right place.

As we’ve been slowly and hopefully very organically adding all these new characters to the Marvel Universe, it just seemed that sort of violence inspiring a young hero to rise up and act, and using her science acumen, her natural born abilities that are still raw but so ahead of where even Tony Stark was at that age, was very exciting to me.

What have we seen of her so far in the Iron Man comics?

In the latest issue of Iron Man, Tony is in a lab talking to himself, and he’s already aware that there’s some student at M.I.T. that’s reverse-engineered one of his old armors all by herself in her dorm room. He’s aware of her immediately.

What’s been the reception of the character so far (before this announcement)?

Thankfully because of my involvement in the creation of Miles Morales and Jessica Jones and some other characters, it’s getting the benefit of the doubt from even the most surly fans. There are fans who say, “Show us the new stuff,” and then there are fans who say, “Don’t do anything different from when I was a kid.” So when you’re introducing new characters, you’re always going to have people getting paranoid about us ruining their childhood.

I’ve been down this road with Miles Morales, Jessica Jones, Maria Hill. I knew I was in good hands with Mike Deodato and other artists who are helping visualize Riri.

Marvel Comics’ diverse new cast has stirred some controversy among a subset of fans.

Some of the comments online, I don’t think people even realize how racist they sound. I’m not saying if you criticize you’re a racist, but if someone writes, “Why do we need Riri Williams we already have Miles?” that’s a weird thing to say. They’re individuals just like Captain America and Cyclops are individuals. All I can do is state my case for the character, and maybe they’ll realize over time that that’s not the most progressive thinking.

But increasingly we see less and less of that. Once Miles hit, and Kamala Khan hit and female Thor hit—there was a part of an audience crawling through the desert looking for an oasis when it came to representation, and now that it’s here, you’ll go online and be greeted with this wave of love.

I think what’s most important is that the character is created in an organic setting. We never had a meeting saying, “we need to create this character.” It’s inspired by the world around me and not seeing that represented enough in popular culture.

Why did it take so long to turn the Avengers from a team of mostly white dudes into a more diverse array of characters?

Talking to any of the older creators, it’s the thing they said they wish they’d done more of—reflecting the world around them. It just wasn’t where the world was at at that time. Now, when you have a young woman come up to you at a signing and say how happy she is to be represented in his universe, you know you’re moving in the right direction.

I don’t want to spoil anything for fans—

More people are going to be upset that they think they know the ending to Civil War II now than anything we just talked about. But I can tell you just because we’re hearing what we’re saying doesn’t know you mean how Civil War II ends. We’re not telling you the end, at all.

What led Tony Stark to a place where he’s stepping out of the suit?

We’re in the middle of a very big Tony Stark storyline—actually three storylines converging. His best friend died, his company is collapsing and he’s finding out who his biological parents were all at the same time. That’s stressful for a character who is wired the way Tony is wired and has dependency issues the way Tony does.

Tony is also a master at not paying attention to the thing that’s most important and distracting himself with Avengers stuff. How that all shakes out such that Tony is no longer in the armor? You’ll have to wait to find out for the end of Civil War II. But it does create a path or Riri Williams, who Tony will know and will be interacting with very shortly in the comics.

How do they meet?

One of the things Tony does to distract himself from all the things going on in his life is he goes to find this young woman who is flying around the middle of America in an armor that’s not completely made to try to find out what her deal is.

It’s hard to subtly fly around in Iron Man armor.

You imagine that Tony has Iron Man armor on his Google Alerts.

He’s also aware that this young woman is flying by him in terms of how quickly she’s doing it. Her brain is maybe a little better than his. She looks at things from a different perspective that makes the armor unique. He can’t help but go maybe I should buy her out.

She’ll be dead or talking about it’s ok if white people touch her hair by issue 5.

Or how her race isn’t a factor in a white as fuck field like STEM. By at least….issue 4.

Did y’all even read the interview or …. All y’all just jumping to conclusions? He’s not ignorant to the issues y’all so take it down a few notches👌🏾 anyway thank god we r getting a black women playing a big character too! And hopefully they don’t pick some light skinned black woman either

Actually Bendis has been pretty ignorant when it comes to the other Black kid taking over a legacy role.

So excuse me if I’m not even a little bit excited for this.

also this mess

but yes let’s trust bendis with this new black girl who is still can’t use the word afro latino or turns the serious issues and microaggressions that fat poc face into a who has it worse off conversation

Ugh I was looking for this panel and couldn’t find it.

I was right in my review. The second screenshot also reinforces the docile Asian that doesn’t believe in racism/integrated into whiteness

Bendis ain’t shit. I worked for the dude and it wasn’t nothin but micro aggressions and a huge dismissing of problems his two black daughters were having when I brought them up I.E. Racism, identifying in a white family, wanting to be lighter, hating their hair etc. He had the audacity to say that their daughters would get over all their problems after a month of therapy. So, he ain’t shit.

Trees can get email in Australia. In 2013, trees were assigned email addresses by the city of Melbourne so its citizens could report potential problems, but people ended up writing thousands of love letters to their favorite trees instead. Source

Sometimes the trees even responded…

Source: didyouknowblog.com*I would say “Only in Australia” except I know there would be people writing love letters to the trees in the US too.

And my usual disclaimer: I didn’t actually write these, but you can visit the highlighted websites for an in depth incursion into the worlds of Tumblr.

If you like the posts on racism in fandom then the place to go for that is Stitch’s Media Mix/Tumblr/ Blog, and be sure to subscribe to her on WordPress.